Today
glass is so widely used, it is hard to realise how little known it was
in ancient China. We in the West are inheritors of a long tradition.
The Romans, for example, brought glass vessels and glassmaking to
northern Europe, where glass was later developed for magnificent
stained glass windows in religious and secular buildings. The Chinese,
by contrast, had no indigenous glassmaking tradition, and adopted
foreign techniques only spasmodically. Yet its very rarity makes
Chinese glass all the more ínteresting. Instead of a common place,
glass in China was always something special, an exotic import, a
precious alternative to such materials as jade.This Volume brings
together some of the most recent research on this little studied
subject. The three essays cover three different periods and three
different aspects of glass manufacture and glass use. It is an exciting
moment when extensive excavations have brought to light glass finds in
a range of sites of widely different periods. For the first time, this
material makes it possible to give a detafied account of, at least, the
early phases of glass use from about the fifth century B.C. to the
twelfth century A.D.

INDICE

Preface by Jessica Rawson

Acknowledgements

Introduction

CHINESE GLASS

Cecilia Braghin, Polychrome and Monochrome Glass of the Warring States and Han Periods

An Jiayao, Glass Vessels and Ornaments of the Wei, Jin and Northern and Southern Dynasties Periods

Shen Hsueh-Man, Luxury or Necessity: Glassware in Sarìra Relic Pagodas of the Tang and Northern Song Periods

Chinese Characters

Chinese Summaries

Questo
volume raccoglie alcuni degli studi più aggiornati riguardanti il vetro
in Cina, un argomento poco conosciuto; contiene tre saggi (di Cecilia
Braghin, An Jiayao e Shen Hsueh-man,) che analizzano tre periodi
diversi: gli Stati Combattenti e gli Han (475 a.C.-9 d.C.), i Wei, i
Jin e le Dinastie Settentrionali e Meridionali (386-589 d.C.), i Tang e
i Song Settentrionali (618-1127 d.C.). Questi saggi illustrano le
principali categorie di vetri presenti nei tre periodi e ricostruiscono
alcuni dei contesti sociali e religiosi nei quali tali manufatti
vennero utilizzati

Per informazioni
e-mail: ufficio.editoriale@cini.it